¶ Intro
Not everyone knew that I had several people in my life that had been murdered at various times in my life, or that I had bared witness to a lot of abuse or pain, or had a lot of harmful abusive experiences in my own life. And everyone is walking into the room with something that we don't know about. And you know, there really is just in a planet of nine billion, hundreds of millions of people that have had the experience of never having love reflected to them or role modeled for them.
Today we have Davey Brown. She is a renowned well being educator, Ahila and an author that has dedicated her life to guiding individuals towards holistic wellness and self discovery. How can someone be in survival mode, be or a low place in their life, but still stop behating.
Journey sometimes just letting yourself break a little bit, you know, I think that's the thing that we tend to avoid for so many like valid reasons, like you have to keep going, But there's no amount of talk therapy that is going to change your experiences in life. Only somatic processing can do that. We can all say we're a lot of things and believe that and have the knowledge that enforces that, but until you practice it, it's just
the theory. You have to prove the theory and the hypothesis by doing.
I'm Radi Wkah and on my podcast A Really Good Cry, we embrace the messy and the beautiful, providing a space
¶ Writing about grief and joy
for raw, unfiltered conversations that celebrate vulnerability and allow you to tune in to learn, connect and find comfort together. Hi everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of A Really Good Cry.
Today we have Davey Brown. She is a renowned well being educator, a healer, and an author that has dedicated her life to guiding individuals towards holistic wellness and self discovery. She was also Chief Impact Officer at Chopra Global, founded by Deepak Chopra, and her new book, Living with Wisdom is such a beautiful guide to help relieve pain that is blocking your spiritual growth. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, Roddy. I'm so excited to be with you.
Oh, I'm so happy to be with you. And I read your book and I just thought it was one so beautifully written but also felt like a friend that's talking to you, which I really appreciated. It didn't feel like as much as you are so wise and you have so much wisdom to share, it didn't feel like an educator. It felt like a friend giving you advice in a way that holds experience and your own pain and trauma being put through it and sharing yourself with us.
So thank you, so much, thank you, thank you beautiful. That was so my intention, Like it felt amazing to
¶ The Deep Connection Between Self-Worth and Joy
hear that. That's like what you were feeling from it, and what you got from it, and.
What experiences brought you to write this book.
God, so many you know.
I think I have always been studying my life from a very young age, and I think some of us are naturally kind of that sensitive or that aware that we're noticing paradox even before we know the word, or we're noticing, you know, contrast in the things people say, but then the way the world behaves. That was always
kind of like very glaring to me. But then just also someone who has had a lot of experiences from a very young age with trauma, with loss, with kind of living a really really doalistic experience, There's just never been a moment in my life that I think I haven't been investigating grief to some extent, or investigating like what is joy actually or why does it feel like some people have it in some don And these were just always kind of themes that no matter where my
life took me, that was always kind of like the undercurrent the underflow of what I was kind of watching and witnessing and just like developing a lot of perspective on Yeah.
And do you feel like worth and joy have a connection to each other. I feel like I've had the lowest moments of joy or the hardest moments in my life where I think I've lacked a sense of worth and so so from my experience, I think worth and joy in your own self have such a deep correlation. But how has your experience been with that?
You know what?
What I'm hearing in you saying that is like the way I notice both of those as like inner feelings. It's like having space, right, because like if you don't have the space inside to even hold or notice or rest in your own worth, you're not going.
To feel it.
And it's the same thing with joy, you know, And I think that that's something that is really important for a lot of people to know, especially if you've been through challenging things. Joy truthfully takes practice, you know, in childhood. Depending on your childhood, it may have been easier to be known to you, but most certainly in adulthood, after we've been carrying and contorting and also being you know, put into so many boxes or programmed with.
So many things.
It's like joy takes repetition, you know, and it's usually very incremental. It's like giving yourself this space and the trust to feel like really small things are enough, or that you can smile with some of the smaller things, and then that creates the space. And I think it's
¶ Joy Is a Choice You Make Every Day
important that we really start looking at the effects of some of the things that didn't get our consent, like the impact social media would actually have on us, right and like what it actually does to you biologically, into your brain.
A lot of people have been used to.
Performative joy because they may not have had access to know it otherwise. And performative joy is like, yeah, I put up the big post, or I gave this speech, or I had the party, or I'm having this big way that I'm sharing. And it's like, you'll notice if joy is some of the work you're being invited into if the way you're presenting your happiness isn't the way that you're actually feeling it in your inner world. And I think there's no judgment around that, but it is
really valuable information to notice. Am I like celebrating and big and I'm having all the pictures with the yeah, you know, like all the smiles and the but like, inside, I actually don't feel that proud. I don't feel that scene. I don't feel like this is enough. Why hasn't this fixed everything? You know, it's important to notice those differences and our body and in our outward experience.
And sometimes if you've only had those those moments, you actually don't realize that you don't know what joy actually feels like. And so having those big moments, those moments where you're like, oh, this must be what it is. This must be what joy actually is, because that's what I see and that's the way that I've created it in my life. But then when you experience those, you know, when you said the little moments I was telling I
went for a walk yesterday night. I was feeling a bit blah, and I went for a walk last night, and I realized, no matter what I tried to bring of momentary joy into my day before that, when I went on the walk, I was like, oh my gosh, the bird's chirping bringing me so much joy, or oh my goodness, sing the sunset is filling my heart in a way nothing else does. And so I think you're right.
¶ How to Start Healing When You're Still in Survival Mode
It's so much about the small moments, and we think it's about the big moments until you start actually becoming, and I think it's presence. Like I've had friends who've been through I would say more than most people have gone through, and they remind me that every single day they've just making a choice to feel joy because they've had to make it a choice they could have chosen
not to, but every single day they've chosen too. And so whether it is in a little piece of their morning moment where they look outside and they see the sunrise, to making eye contact with someone on the street, it's like all those present moments allow you to opt in for joy.
I love that opped in because it really is about how do you figure out what gives.
You a private smile?
And so many of us look at happiness, enjoy or goodness about there being some outward catalysts, most usually another person right that is the reason or the person that brings.
That to you.
But it's so incredibly, incredibly powerful and empowering to be able to bring your self pleasure.
And joy on your own, yeah, and not be relying on external people or things.
That are temporary.
You talk so much about, of course healing in your book. How can someone who still feels like they're in survival mode, Let's say they've listened to this up till this point and they're like, oh my god, that's me. I actually don't know what joy feels like. How can someone be in survival mode, be or a low place in their life, but still start their healing journey? Like what does that look like?
Yeah, you know, it looks like sometimes just letting yourself break a little bit, you know. I think that's the thing that we tend to avoid for so many like valid reasons, like you have to keep going and the world doesn't stop just because something is happening.
To you, or if you have children, it's like.
Trying to keep your spirit fortified enough to like be who they need you to be first, you know. So I think just really kind of being able to settle into observing the fact that something hurts in general, that first step is so massive. You know, no one wants to admit their broken or that someone else harm them or hurt them, or that they're not where they want to be in life.
Right, so we do.
All these protective measures, but like nothing comes of that, right, Like you're just more stuck and you can look up in two decades have passed and there's been no progress, you know, So I think that kind of just willing. You don't have to say that out loud, you don't have to wear it as some kind of badge in front of everyone. But being able to create honest dialogue with you inside is a powerful first step. Connecting to those tiny joys is a powerful second step. Just beginning
to temper yourself into and see how much you can tolerate. Ye, you might notice that like joy can really trigger you, and it can bring forward a lot of sadness. Honestly, it can bring forward a lot of anger. When you start to realize that you actually are lovable and it's not hard to do. It can be kind of shocking to your system and maybe remind you of ways that you have fought to earn love or earn support.
Over the years.
And then I think, you know, the biggest thing and this is the piece that everyone a boys and I have to say, like I specifically wrote this book for the over intellectualizers, for the people that are addicted to self help books, right, Like I have just between clients, between friends, between you know, different junctures in my own journey. I'll see people that have walls like a library, right, oh yeah, lean walls or if you bring up you know,
something like breathwork, Oh yeah, I know all that. Oh yeah, whim hoff or yama yup, yup, yup, you know, and it's like, yes, that is the information and do you do it?
Yes, right, Becauyes that's the piece.
Like nothing changes, no amount, and there's so many phenomenal resources and modalities and each of us need different things, but there's no amount of talk therapy that is going to change your experiences in life. Only somatic processing can do that. It's about integrating the two. It's bringing what you're learning, what you've recognized, what you've named, what you finally understood happened or didn't happen, and then being willing
¶ Learning Without Action Builds the Ego
to be in practice with your body when the triggers of those things inevitably come up and so practice is the only way to change your life long term in a sustainable way. And I think the lens that I try to look at that through in my book is really seeing those practices that can feel triggering and feel irritating and angering, is to make it something that is
a lot more devotional. It's less about checking boxes. It's less about you know, okay, my daily practice, my self care practice I do, this is Jeff, And it's more about like, I am so freaking devoted to the beauty in my life. Like I am so devoted to the fact that I deserve to feel good about myself and my life. I deserve to have a healthy body. I deserve to have a heart that feels open and filled with light.
I deserve to have a brain that.
Isn't ruminating in thought or telling me things that feel that make me feel bad about myself. Like and only kind of an energy of not proving, not discipline, but devotion,
¶ Devotion Starts When You See Yourself as Sacred
I think can really bring that forward.
Yeah, I love that you said that. And when you said the intellectuals, I always remember there's knowledge and then there's wisdom, which comes with experience. And I remember my spokesure teacher once said that when you accumulate too much knowledge, like when you keep building and building and just grabbing and grabbing and constantly learning and learning, it actually builds more ego in you than it does goodness, because you end up feeling like the Noah instead of the doer
and the person that is experiencing. And so he always said that when you learn, then there's a process of learning, but what comes with learning is sharing. What comes with learning is doing. And so if you're just harboring knowledge, actually that builds ego, which is the opposite of probably what you're trying to do when you're learning all these self help books and right, I think that's so interesting.
I mean, it's just so deeply true, and it's all just theory until you put it into practice. We can all say we're a lot of things and believe that and have the knowledge that enforces that, but until you practice it, it's just the theory. You have to prove the theory and the hypothesis by doing and devotion.
I recently started, you know, when I was thinking about why I do, whether it's physical wellness practices or mental or spiritual things that I grew up doing. My mom taught me how to do or all these different things. I realize that sometimes the thing missing was this idea that actually every single thing is a gift. So if I think of my body as a gift, if I think of everything that's coming into my life as a gift, how can I not gift from God? Then actually looking
after myself is a devotional practice. And so when you are, of course you're devoted to yourself, but at the same time, it becomes even a little bit easier to be devotional towards your body, to be devotional towards your heart when you think of it as a gift of God, when you think of it as a gift from the universe, whatever words or phrases connect to you most. But I do think when you realize that it's not yours and it's something that has been given to you, then you
look after a little bit more. It's like when something's given to you free, or you feel like it's yours, you probably look after it a lot less than if your mum gave you something that was like an heirloom that you're looking after and it's precious. And so when you start thinking about yourself in that way, it doesn't then feel selfish. Self love and self care doesn't just
feel like you know, buzzwords that people are using. It's like, oh no, like every part of me has been gifted to me, so I have to look after it, and the practices are the ways to look after it.
I mean, that's just so incredibly beautiful, you know, and just so deeply true, and even that it takes time, you know, And so I think it's like so many of us and myself included, for so long it's like an awareness will come to you and you know.
That's the path, right, but it just takes so.
Long and slow work, right, and it takes even the practice of believing the thought in addition to the practices, because you know, I think, just something that we can and that I hope more people really kind of look at and open their hearts too, is like we have our individual experiences and everyone is walking into the room with something that we don't know about, and you know, there really is just in a planet of nine billion, hundreds of millions of people that have had the experience
of never having love reflected to them or role modeled for them. And it's very hard to sit in that truth because it's counterintuitive to what this country is built on, this belief in family or you know, these kind of ideals that we share, but not everybody lives these, right, And so if you never had real love or acceptance reflected to you, that might be a barrier on why it's harder for you to connect to an ideology of self love, even though to your mind that makes perfect
sense and you wish you could. And I think this book is really written for that too. It's written for people who may have CPTSD, who may have a lot of complex madic experiences over time, and it's not just the one thing that happened to you once.
But there's space for that.
But it's also maybe an assordid amount of big tea and little t traumas mixed in with the overall frictions of life, mixed in with the overall collective grievings of life. But you know, for anybody that feels because like, for example, I remember I first started meditating and that made a lot of sense to my body. Yeah, and that brought
me a lot of relief. And I think when you come into that world, it seems like the next natural step would be like yoga, right, and I remember the first couple of times I tried to do yoga, it angered me to such a degree and I couldn't understand why, and I felt so annoyed, so frustrated, so judgmental about other people in class with me and the teacher, and it's just like, what are you people talking about? And like,
my body doesn't do that, and you know. And so I think for a lot of people that have had challenging experiences, there is a barrier to entering the wellness world if you don't understand that grieving is a part of this process, you know, and all of it. This practice means the beginning of your practice is probably lots of good cries, you know, lots of anger maybe, right, lots of rage, sacred rage, lots of confusion, yes, And
¶ Why You're Still Hurting After "Doing the Work"
then slowly that lifts, and then you get to the next layer, and then that lifts, and then you go higher and higher and higher. But I think starting to teach really showed me the need, and it really showed me how much I wanted my career in that space to be rooted in trauma and formed healing and in using language in a particular way and being able to be slower with people and give a lot of people
step by step explanation. Like when I came in to even my first retreat, you know, over fifteen years ago, I kept saying, but how, and the response reflected back to me kept being like, you're in your own way, Just.
Be free, just give it over, surrender.
Not everyone knew that I had several people in my life that had been murdered at various times in my life, or that I had bared witness to a lot of abuse or pain, or had a lot of harmful abusive experiences in my own life.
So without that.
Information, you could cause me a lot of harm, even if you mean well, because you're not aware that people are having experiences that you aren't.
Yes, it's so true, And I think what you said about it takes time. I think there's one thing about knowing that grief is part of it, but also realizing that the goal is not onward and upward, it is ebbing and flowing like you're constantly in this cycle. And in a tradition it says it takes lifetimes, not just one lifetime. It can take lifetimes to actually like you know, imagine well in all culature says we have had so
many lifetimes. So imagine you're carrying the weight of all those lifetimes plus this one lifetime that you have accumulated. Every single thing that you've allowed into your senses, or not even allowed sometimes that have just come through your senses. All of that has left these little imprints called some scarras like these little imprints. And the more you emphasize them in different ways, the more I guess, the more you water them, the more you step into them, the
deeper they get. And so then you're carrying them, and it gets harder and harder to make it through. And then what you said about it coming to the surface, I noticed that so much when I came into my practice, And actually, I think that is the point. The point of it is, you are unraveling. When you start your practices, you are bringing to surface all the things that you have buried and kept in a little cage in your
heart and kept in a cage in your body. And so I remember when I started doing my meditation practice and even a physical yoga practice, I found it so uncomfortable. And not only did I find aches and pains that I didn't know existed because of emotions trapped in different places. I remember I had one I did my yoga teacher training, and in that we did a whole day of hip flexa work and I was falling, Oh my god, balling
and at the same time so uncomfortable physically. And if anyone who doesn't know, they say that hips is where women carry a lot of their emotions absolute and so physically emotionally everything just comes to the surface. And in the vadas it talks about it being like a mirror. So as soon as you start these practices, it's like a dusty mirror. And the more that you do your meditation practice, the more you keep stay consistent with it,
the more there is repetition. You're slowly wiping off, wiping off, wiping off eventually to be able to see your true self. So but then to see your true self, you have to make it through the layers that have been accumulated through everything that's happened.
So and that's why it's okay if it takes your whole life, you know it's meant to be.
It's like you don't meditate for like a week and you're like, okay, great, I've done the world. It's like it's not a practice for a short period. It is a commitment. It's a life commitment. Yeah, it's a life commitment.
It's so funny when you said that right now, it's like and I say this with a lot of love and joy, because I think this is so many of us. At first when you start the work, right, you go to a therapy session, and then I remember one girlfriend was like, yeah, so I had a therapy session and I've done the work.
Yeah, it's like you've done some like yes.
Like beautiful, it is the start, but like that's not how it works, you know, Like and I think you know, yeah, just like to your point, it's like you get.
To a layer.
And one of the stories I shared in my book
¶ You Can't Heal If You're Always Saving Others
is like I remember going to a teacher and I had been working on this one particular kind of wound just for like ten years, right, and I felt like I was in just such a wise, beautiful space with it, and I was in this lecture and I just like I got so upset, I got so just so much charge filled my body and I'm just crying. And I waited and waited, and I went up to the teacher and I was just like I don't understand, like I've already healed this.
Why am I crying again? Why am I feeling this again?
And like, you just looked at me with so much wisdom and grace, And I remember he looked at He said, you have. You've done so much work, Debbie, and that's why you're being invited to revisit it now again and see it in this way from a new layer, from a new perspective. And that's really what it was. It wasn't that I hadn't done the work. It wasn't even
that it's still really hurt or bothered me. It was like, now I get the opportunity to see how this particular pattern shows up in this particular place, and like, Wow, how can I love that too?
How can I observe that too?
Wow? What do you think is a lie or like something that people tell themselves, especially women? I'd say that blocks their healing, like something that's out in the world where people end up believing but that actually ends up blocking their healing.
Hmmm, oh my god.
That you're supposed to be taking care of everyone else, you know. I think that in so many ways that shows up and that kind of programming, it's so deeply ingrained in us for so many centuries, so we're going to be revisiting it all the time, right. So it's like sometimes that shows up in a relationship if you are trying to save the person you're with, or if you think that you're the righteous one that just knows how to hold pain different, so it's about you doing
¶ What Are Mudras and Why Are They So Powerful?
and giving to them.
You got to look at that.
It also can very sophisticatedly show up in areas where you should be devoted to others, like motherhood, right, but anything can be used as a tool of avoidance, So especially with women, any kind of thing where there might be this underlying.
Edge of self sacrifice.
As martyrdom, not as like sometimes you got to do hard things and I'm showing up with what that needs right now. But then I'm going to feel if you're never feeling, you're telling yourself a story and you're actually
avoiding what you should be doing. But for women, I think more than any it's it's very easy for us to use so many beautiful things as a tool of avoidance, but it's still going to sink true no matter how you try to dress it up, right, Like your life at the end of it is still going to be a sum of your experiences, and so.
You can take.
Decades to pretend that that's not happening, but at some point you'll be confronted with it because you're here to do the work. You're here in this lifetime to do as much as you can to clear as much of that karma as possible. Gotta you gotta get in, You gotta get your hands dirty.
Have you had seen I mean, I know you see clients, and you've seen so many people of your time and help so many people. What are some of the practices? Are there any that you've noticed, no matter who it is, it's helped. And if someone's starting their journey, can you give us like two or three practical ways to get into a practice?
You know what I would really say?
And a lot of a lot of my work is really catered through a trauma informed lens always and forever.
So some of these things may even be things, especially.
If you are like voracious about your self care, that you've heard of or that you know. And it's not about reinventing the wheel because all of this, as you know deeply well, it's like so much.
Is has existed ancient.
It's just so many ancient all of it, like, none of it needs to be reinvented. God has always provided since as long as humanity has. But it's about how present you can be with each of the things that you might come across. And so I found that in my work because when I first started teaching meditation, especially in my community, it was like I'd ask everyone to close their eyes, and I would look out and everyone's eyes would be wide open and scared.
You know.
I'd be like, and now gently close your eyes for meditation people, yeah, you know.
And I had to really study.
That and understand what was happening and the deeper fear, the maybe previous experiences of not having safety right, because not everyone gets to grow up or be in environments where you can close your eyes around people, because what may happen right if you're not on guard, or if you're not looking around and constantly noticing and testing the emotions of people in the room.
Right.
And so to that extent, a way that I found to help people, especially if getting still getting quiet as hard would be to really work with a lot of hand placements, and one of the very first is to feel what supportive touch feels like through your own hand.
So we might hear certain things like place your hand on your heart, right, but notice how you're doing that when you do, and I always try to recommend for people, try to really get that meaty base of your palm that has stability and get it right in the center of your breastbone and feel the pressure of it touching your breastbone. And notice how much pressure you like.
Is a harder press.
That makes you feel like you're being hugged or being held. Is that what allows you to feel safe? Is it a lighter kind of more tender, looser touch that's just like your fingertips grazing. Is that how you feel most supported and safe? And just beginning to notice the nuance of how your own body is reacting to practices, but knowing that you can make the adjustment and do it
privately right and daily practice with yourself. Something that I lean into in the book is like a lot of mudras, which is, like you know, Jess, like the most delicious.
Ancient wisdom to me.
It's like it is going to the er for me, you know, like bringing your hands and kind of advancing your meditation practice to include other things that give you awareness about how your body actually feels.
Could you explain to people with moodras A and yes, don't.
Well, so mudras are I guess in the simplest context hand placements that you would use different kind of symbolic hand gestures that you use in your meditation practice. And so one of the base ones is what you know, a lot of people would call like nonmstay hands or but it's the angali mudra. So it's your hands and what in the Western world you'd call prayer position. But having them here and then connecting you know, the inner parts the backs of your thumbs into the center of
your chest and what that does. That actually brings your body into a couple different spaces, into a space of gratitude, yes, as we know it, but also into.
Space of surrender.
And it's one of the most grounding hand placements you can bring, especially for grief as an early beginning way to connect.
But you can even experience that in a few different ways.
Kind of in front of you, in front of your solar plexus, point it outwards. You can just have it kind of gently levitating almost in front of your chest, or you can push those thumbs into your chest. But those are all varying degrees of how to experience one particular mudra that is meant to kind of aid you in a lot of different ways that you may want or need to heal.
I just want to add that Davey has is so sweet. She's actually come here with her arm post surgery, and so if you're watching this, she has a ceiling opinno, but she's still trying to show us all the moves she's ceiling. It is honestly so beautiful.
Yeah.
I love mooders, and you know, whether it's moodras or whether it's hand positions. I remember when I started doing kirtan and if anyone who doesn't know what cyratin is, it's a beautiful montra meditation, singing practice, singing mantras together it is. It is just beautiful people dancing it. They
cry in it. It's just releases so many emotions. But I remember when I started going to these curitans and people would have their arms up in their air and like literally like this, like singing their hearts out with their arms up in the air, and I was like, that felt really uncomfortable to me. I was like, I'm not going to do that. That seems like I'm so into it. Oh yeah, it's a bit muchs Like I haven't felt
that you're wiving. And then I remember at one point after I went to quite a few, I leaned into it and I was like, oh my gosh, like the feeling of having your hands up in surrender of like it just it invokes a different feeling. And then we also have the practice of bowing down and putting our head to earth as part of a respect when you walk into a temple or when I walk into my altar at home. And there's something that you feel when you create these these repetitions of movements in your body
that are connected to something. And so whether it's your arms up in the air and surrender, whether it's bowing down and humility, it's like these little positions, these little hand movements, these these the way that you position your body. You can link that to an emotion that you feel, you can link that to a quality that you want
to invoke. Yes, and I find that really beautiful that you know, and that's that body mind connection that you can create in the same way as you can create spaces that feel a certain way in your home or or in your life.
Yeah, and like what I'm hearing in what you're saying too, It's like it's invoking a reverence for your human experience, right, like through the things that you want to receive, through the things that you've already walked through powerfully.
It's like, you know much.
It's kind of similar to like in like Western churches, like praise and worship, right And I remember I'd walk into a church at some point and you'd see people like running back and forth or just hands up or just on the floor wailing, and I'd be like.
Okay, you know, all right, but will I look silly? Will I look?
And then the connection happens between you and the divine you and God, you and your higher belief and then.
You get it right and you're like, oh, it is.
My honor to be on my knees, like it is my honor to throw my hands up to seem to profess,
you know. And just one small thing I forgot to say about those mood that is, it's so it's also opening your energy channels and your body and so different ones that I feature in the book are really meant to speak to different things that you may have barriers up against or may want to invite more healing into based on how the energy changes within your body as you're meditating, based on the position that your hands are in.
And I just realized we got into this question by me asking you what practices can people do to actually start their healing journey, And so I want to just recap on that you recommended Mooderus. While you're doing your practice.
Is practice touching yourselves.
Yeah, and so that's also like not just like the hand on the chest, but I found that something really powerful for somatic processing, especially done over the time, like I probably dedicated two years to this without ceasing once ever, is slow stretching with your body every single day, morning
and night. And not just stretch that's like focused on if you're somebody that has an active body and works out right, but like really deepening into slow stretch swinging your hips as you shared, you know, women, we store so much in our hips. It is believed, especially if you follow some of the thought around epigenetics, that a lot of trauma, sometimes sexual trauma, if that's been a
¶ Why the 'Girl Boss' era left women disconnected
part of your path, get stored here. And so if you can't kind of sit with ease cross leg that could be depending on other medical things that only you know about in your body that could be one of the things that wants to be released is some trauma that could be stored there. But it's our hips also, our bone marrow, and our hips is where our immunity
is built. So when we don't have a lot of flexibility in our hips, or we don't we're not really present and aware of it, you could find yourself getting sick more often or just having longer recovery times.
So swaying with your body.
Stretching, moving, bending, folding, you know, all those things also help to completely release stress, get you ready for bed, naturally, regulate your vagus, nerve, and your nervous system, and those are all necessary parts of healing. You can't heal if you don't learn and practice regulating your nervous system. And all of these practices lend themselves to doing that.
That's beautiful. Yeah, I need to do a lot more stretching in my life, honestly, but yeah, I've been. It feels good, it does. I'm definitely trying to swap out some of the higher intensity things that I do with I feel like that's what my body's been calling for, Like slower movements. You know, yeah, yeah, you talk about softening and slowing down in your book. What does that really look like for a woman who's so used to hustle mode, which many of us are.
Oh God, we have had listen.
Way too many women have been worshiping at the Girl Boss Shrine for way too long. And I believe that some of the best ways to soften, especially as a woman,
is to look at things through a few lenses. Look at what your unique body needs, what your life experiences have led you to, but then also look at you know, we're all always at the mercy of the collective consciousness that we're in, right, no matter how aware we are, no matter how kind of pristine we may be in our own energy, Like there are nine billion people on the planet, we are going to.
Be affected by whatever the majority of.
Consciousness is, no matter what, And that tends to be low, right, It tends to be a lower vibration of kind of global collective consciousness. And so I found that it can be especially for people you know, who are more intellectual or would consider themselves intellectualizers, it can be really powerful to really study the conditioning at play that might be
keeping you from getting those different access points. And so you know, if we look at what life has been like in the last five, ten, fifteen years, a lot of what was like girl boss culture or this kind of really the truth of it, was about empowering women to take up space and to take up position as we should and as we've often been denied through various systems. But it's not through replicating what men do and making
it pink right like. It's not through like any of those kind of systems and just making it yours and sounding powerful while doing it. I think that created a lot of performance culture that wasn'tuine empowerment, and it's left a lot of women confused about how do I actually reclaim the feeling? And we're each both, we're each masculine and feminine, but how do I reclaim the femininity inside
¶ Breath is your anchor in hard moments
of myself? No matter how you identify, we all have both of those energies, And so I think some of the softening is really around kind of disconnecting from performance, because that's what greater societal flow wants all of us
to do. It wants us all to be earning, It wants us all to be performing, It wants us all to be proving all the time, and so you would have to strip some of those programmed beliefs and some of that mentality in addition to kind of being present with like what is the truth of myself as a woman?
What do I like and dislike?
And you know, and that takes time, and that's like a beautiful unfolding that can't just be done on your first retreat or your first you know, a weekend of vision boarding. That helps, but it's settling, it's it's disconnecting from the way other people project on us or tell us to do anything and saying, you know, what actually does feel good and pleasurable and safe inside of my own body?
And like, how can I do more of that? And how can I do more of that? Just for me? And not everyone even needs to know about all of that.
You know, if someone is trying to move into the soft girl era, yes, what would that kind of day look like? Like what kind of things would you recommend they do throughout the day that allows them to come back into that space?
Oh? My god, dis question.
Oh, I would say the first thing that I've found really really.
Helps is to create a breath work practice.
And I know now that is on trend, but it is ancient, you know, it is just it is life changing.
It's life changing, it's it's profound, it's miraculous. You know, it's not just you know some okay I'm feeling oh okay, No, it's like you know, it's like ah, Like notice how you can even open your mouth on a release, and like how much you can soften your jaw and your neck and your body, And like, how do I slowly build that connection inside so that I don't just feel breath in my head or in my chest, like I feel it in the depth of my womb, you know, like I can now actually feel it in my knee
that's hurting, or I can feel it in the tips of my toes. You know, working with breath work changes the way your life feels, the way your body feels, It changes the way pleasure feels, It changes the way that joy feels. And so I think for everyone, but really especially women who move really fast and do so much for others, there is nothing that heals you more. There is nothing that grounds you more that there is nothing that allows you to regain agency in your body more.
Than the breath.
So that first and foremost is just that is my practice throughout all day, every day. And you know what, I think you find when you do connect to that practice and really like settle into it, you find that your body eventually learns how to do that without you thinking about it, right, Like I can have a charged interaction and no longer do I have to stop and think like wow, I should do some breath work because that was heavy, or do I have to say, okay,
let me pause and breathe. It's like you could be talking to me right now and I'd be.
Like, your body's reminded and constantly realizes that that is your coping mechanism.
And I think for everyone that is like that is the piece that you can really track, like just how much you've done for yourself when you're not working to do the work right right, Like your body just remembers that, like this is what I need and this is how I need it, and here you.
Go, Oh my god, beautiful. So breath work. It YEA sounds simple, but so beyond life changing. I can say the same to myself. I feel like breath has allowed me to become so many things that I didn't think I could be. Through relieving anxiety in the moment or long term, or in moments where I feel any kind of emotion, any kind of emotion. I remember my yoga teach training. They said, breath is the anchor between your
body and your mind. So every single time you're trying to your mind's running in the past, in the future, bringing it back to the present just with a simple breath. And I was like, oh my gosh, that is incredible. When I started practicing, I was like, oh my god, it's actually true. And then in all those hard moments whenever I felt yesterday when I was feeling like I wanted to punch someone, I literally all I had to do was go outside and take deep breaths and that
was it. You need to tell anyone about it, you need to talk about it. I didn't need to actually punch someone, which is great.
Great, Well I had to do because like we need you free, like you're doing God's work.
We need you free.
Yes, exactly. All I need to do is take a few breaths, and how be you us free? You can do it yourself. Yeah, And you're in control of it.
You're in control of it all the time, and it can be used in so many ways. You know, it can be used for grief, it can be used for pleasure, it can be used for joy, for grounding, and I think also, you know, for those that are really kind of opening to their soft girl era, that is one of the deep master healers. But then I would also say really bringing your own self romance is one of the best ways to do that, to heal, to open
to the possibility of more. You know, so often when we're trying to heal, we're trying to heal into a life that feels better, that looks better, that has richer relationships in it, right, that has like healthy boundaries in it, Like we are trying to up level our experience and being alive, and like I.
Have a deep practice with beauty.
I have a deep reverence for beauty, and it has healed me in ways I can never imagine. And some of the way I started doing that was like at the top of the pandemic, I was going through a lot of things at once, a lot of things.
The same week that you know.
The George Floyd situation had happened, I was also getting divorced from an almost decade long marriage. I was becoming a single mom to a two year old. We're in the first couple of months of a global pandemic. I had lost a friend, and then all.
The rest of your life as all of us.
Came, you know, you come into all the things that you didn't let yourself think of.
I think that was for so many of us, what happened.
And I couldn't do anything about any of it, right, I couldn't even go to my therapist because we were in a pandemic.
She couldn't figure out.
How to see me yet, and like, you know, Zoom was dressed kind of starting and like and really one of the only things that I could do was breathe, stretch, cry, continue to meditate and make beauty. And that kind of just look like gardening for me. I started my garden in the pandemic.
I you know.
I got seeds and I planted roses, and I would light incense. I hung prisms in all the windows that
¶ Create beauty through your senses
got sun in my house, and you know, I would just on my hardest day that I'd be like, how am I going to raise this child?
Like?
How am I going to do this? What am I going to tell him when he's old enough?
You know? What? Am I?
Why didn't my friend want to leave earth, you know, and like, what what do I do with that feeling? And like and then and you're in the midst of all of that, because all of it will come up many many times, and you take a breath and you look at the sun and.
You say, God, that's so beautiful.
You look at the prisms shining a tiny little rainbow across your fridge, and you.
Stay like, God, that's so beautiful.
You know, like you do all the little teeny tiny things that you don't think are enough to solve the bigger pain, and you just keep looking at it. You just keep doing it, You keep creating it. You when the roses bloom, you go and pick a rose every time for yourself and you put it in a vase. And I grew that, you know, and you look at it like the Buddha did, and you find God in it. And that's the way to slowly soften.
That is so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. And yeah, oh my gosh. I think the main part of what I heard was creating it, Like you have to create it. And I was thinking about reflecting, like what are the ways that I've created it in my life? And it is all the small things. It's like, I love scent, and so in every room, like I'm just giving examples so that other people can maybe take from it if it's something they relate to. But I have incense in my temple area, so I know that it's
related to that. But then every room I have essential or diffuser because every time I go past it, it brings me this like feeling of oh I love that sense, and that reminds me of this, this and this. So each scent has like a different memory link to it. And so I guess and what you said about the prism, it's visual and so actually every sense if you think about what satisfies each sense. When I'm smelling something, what smells do I love? And how can I create that
around me? When I'm looking at something, what is it that I see as beauty? Because sometimes you don't even know that what is it that I look at and I think, oh, this is beautiful? Like so much for me is like natural colors, like earthy tones, and so I was like, how can I create that in different ways, whether it's in pottery, whether it's in the walls around me? And so I think if you think about each sense
¶ What softness really means
and you go through that and you say, what are those things when it's tastes, what are those things that not just stimulate me, but actually make me feel at home? Because I think that's a difference as well. It's like these things can really excite me, what are the things that make me feel like I'm at home? And so moving away from home, I definitely relate to that.
I remember we did this event a few months ago, and that was something that really stuck with me that you said, because you were talking about your book and you were sharing about spices, yes, and just about some of those kind of like freedoms you can find in spice and some of those emotional kind of connections that you can find and spice, and that really stuck with me.
Yeah, I definitely have a connection to spices, flavors and home. And I think you and you know what you're just saying that It's like, whenever I miss home, the first thing I think to do is cook a meal that my mum makes. And it's because of the smells and what I remember coming back from school and smelling those certain things, and it brings this nil nostalgic home feeling.
And as soon as you feel at home if it was a safe space for you, and it's something that you connect to in a positive way, your whole body's relaxes, and so bringing back little things that have fond memories and keeping those things around you in different ways can be such a beautiful way to soften and feel Because I guess when I think about softness, what you're saying
is I feel in my most like relaxed, comforted, safe space. Yeah, right, Like softness is like when you I think about whenever we're stressed, or when we feel anxious, or when we feel like we're not in an environment that can hold us, everything is tense. Yeah, and so what does softness then means? Softness then means the opposite of what are the things that make me feel most comfortable, that make me feel most safe, that make me feel most at home?
Yeah, and so softness is like the feeling of being disarmed.
Yeah.
You know, it's like we're all walking around sometimes ready for battle and every moment, you.
Know, and it's like to be soft is to just be disarmed, like my armor off.
Yeah, it's so true. That reminds me of whenever my husband would walk into a room. I have this like like I know that he's in the house, but like whenever he we still laugh about it. It's like what ten years down the line nearly, and he walks into the kitchen and walks in and I'm like, oh my god, I didn't see that, or like you'll walk into a bathroom, like why did you do that? Why did you shock me?
Like that was like I literally walked into the room, and it made me realize I'm so much more like that when I'm on like high anxiety or on edge about other things in my life. It makes me so much more hyper anxious about the people around me. But also in the things that I watch. That has been such made such a significant difference to how soft I feel and how at ease I feel in my heart.
As soon as I start watching things that cause my mind anxiety or even my heart anxiety, even in the moment you think you watch it and you let it go, but you actually don't.
It's so true.
And so as soon as I start watching things that people I watch this it's so good. And I watched the first episode and I'm like, oh my god, I
¶ Why "I Am" affirmations need to be personal
feel so not happy watching that, and I notice I'm so much more on high alert after having observed something like that, And so.
That is so real.
I've given myself this kind of parameter now, and I'm like, if my foot starts shaking, well I watch something, or if I notice that I'm tapping something, turn it off. It's not for you. You don't need this rollercoaster in your life.
Like, it's so funny, you said, the foot shaking when I went on my bookstore. The one thing I noticed the most when I was doing all my interviews and whatever was my foot would do this, and throughout it I had no idea. I would watch it back and I was like, what is my do? And it was because I guess I was on highlight. And I was like, through that process, I felt like I was so constantly going into one thing after another and feeling quite anxious.
And then I noticed it when I'm in podcasts like this, and I'm like, oh, my foot is as still as can be. Yeah, And so it's so funny how your body starts to indicate these things to you, doesn't it.
Yeah.
And we only know we only notice someone we're aware, you know. That's the thing, because I think this is just natural biology. It's how our biology responds. But if you're aware of your body, you kind of notice those smaller things, and most people don't know.
What would you say? Is one affirmation that you wish every woman would s taught a day with. Do you do affirmations?
Oh my god, it's so good. I have affirmation practices in the boss you.
Do, I'll say, so, the power of I am is unparalleled, right, Like the power of an I am statement is unparalleled.
But I like to really push people.
Instead of kind of saying some of those things that may not be necessarily fully connected that may feel just like I'm doing an affirmation in the way I'm supposed to do an affirmation, right, Like I am love, I am abundance, like powerful, powerful, But maybe also consider like what is a quality of character or a quality of emotional experience that you want to embody for your unique life and your journey? And how do you start saying
that to yourself every day? So, like, if you've had, you know, maybe if you haven't had experiences of being like deeply loved in a familial or romantic way, maybe a way to start inviting that in is to say, like, I am cherished and cherishing, right, Like what are like, what is the feeling.
You want to know in your life? Right?
Or maybe it is like you're brilliant, but you don't always give yourself the chance to be seen in that light. And so it's like I am embodying my brilliance. I am embodying my divine creativity. You know, what is the need for you? And then how do you create a statement that not only makes that need come to life, but makes it beautiful? And make sure you say it in the present tense and the present moment as if it has happened and happening, right, not like I want.
To be brilliant?
Yeah, Like okay, so now you're inviting more longing into your life.
Right, But like I am radiating my.
Brilliance right, like beaking it into existence.
I had gorgeous language, you know, and if there's words, there's so many words to know, So open the thesaurus, right, can you say that word more beautifully?
Open the dictionary?
Is there a different way to kind of supercharge that word that adds more meaning to it? I love working with affirmations in that way.
Yeah.
I think that makes sense because it is such a personal practice. You can't really be one fits all, and it reminded me of when I started praying, because prayer was something I used to really struggle with, like the idea of it wasn't necessarily the idea of speaking to God that I felt connected to. It was like what
am I saying? And I remember thinking, oh God, my prayers are so lame, like they are so boring, and the language is so like a child and I remember then I was like, I really want to or more heart in my prayer, and I just can't find the words for it. And so then I started reading all these beautiful devotional poetry books and I was like, oh my gosh, like this is how I feel, but how
come I kind of put it into those words? And so it was really beautiful because even though there were certain things I would read and I was like, gosh, I can't even relate to this. This is so deeply like this is so deep and so devotional that I don't really feel connected to it yet, but I want to.
And so I keep saying those prayers over and over again, and it was in such a beautiful kind of It was in Sanskrit, which makes it even more beautiful, and the translation in English was actually lovely, but sometimes can't can't even like it doesn't depict it in the most beautiful way. But even then I was like, oh. And then I kept saying those prayers, and then slowly those prayers just kept coming into my mind naturally. So whenever I was thinking of prayer, those words would randomly flow
in or those thoughts would come in. I was like, oh, wow, that's the power of You may not feel it, yeah, but when you keep repeating it and repeating it, it does become And I remember trying to do affirmations and I'll be like, but I'm not this, and I'd be like I am, like I am courageous or I am whatever it was I was feeling, and I was like but, and in my mind would be like, but I'm not.
And so I remember there was this disconnect between like the word I was saying and the belief yeah, And so I would often go kind of waving and out, and I was like, this is so silly. I'm not this, and like why am I saying all these things? And then when I did that with devotional poetry, I was like, oh, I kind of get it now, Like you have to keep saying it. Yeah, you have to.
That's such an important point to make for this kind of a practice, because you're training the belief in yourself, right, And I think, like right to what you're saying, everyone is kind of go to way of surpassing it being a limitation is to try to like say it with more force, yes, right, Like they'll usually say like your power, right, like I am abundant, and I'm like, I don't use that voice for anything.
When do I ever talk that way? That's not my empowered voice.
And I think the beauty of kind of like using it as that devotion opening yourself to the belief it's saying it in whatever way it's showing up now, right, So like sometimes you're going to cry through saying it.
Sometimes you're going to close your eyes, you're going to say it shakily. Do it authentically.
Don't let that be another area that you're adding performance to do it authentically and let it take time and it will click. And like I have to say, when
¶ The real difference between wisdom and knowledge
you were talking about like connecting to like devotional passages, especially in Sanskrit.
Or poetry, that.
I mean like discovering roomy when I did many years ago, was a revolution to my life, Like that is soft girl era, like the way Roomy sure everyone knows, but thirteenth century Sufi mystic poet icon like legend, but the way that Rumy talks about God.
And the language and yeah, it's so hot, like it is so like yummy, It is so sensory, it is so somadic, it is so define and it's like I remember reading those poems and being like, I don't even know what this feels like until exactly.
What.
That's a feeling you can have, and that's a feeling you can have with God. That's the feeling you can have with your own self and your life. Like, oh my god, you know, oh.
I have to share some of my favorite poetry books. So do you know diversial poetry. I feel like you love them. You said this in your book, and I really loved it, so I wrote it out. You said. One of my daughters asked me something similar recently. You have question was how to someone become wise? Is that you?
That was Charlemagne's Forward, But I'm sorry.
I started reading okay forward is so it was so beautiful powerful, I'll keep reading it. I thought about answering with age, but that would be a lie because there's plenty of foolish ass older people out here. So my reply was, experiences make you wise, not just experiences, but what you learn from those experiences. We have all heard the saying smart people learn from their own mistakes. Wise people learn from the mistakes of others. That's just another
way of saying that we learned from experiences. And I was like, it's okay, it wasn't you, but I thought it was such a beautiful explanation of what wisdom actually is, and it's kind of what we talked about earlier. It was like, it is so much more about the practice and the experience that you have than is about the knowing.
Yeah, I'm just so grateful and I can't express it enough. My dear friend Charlemagne the God Leonard, he has been one of my closest, dearest friends since we were both like sharing lunch, right, you know, really for almost two decades and our relationship. He did me the honor of doing the forward for my book and doing the audio
version as well. But you know, it's been so powerful, I think, for each of us to reflect on our lives through these kind of lifelong conversations we've been having with each other throughout our evolution, and one of the things that we've always talked about is we've grown in our own individual consciousness is like wisdom and really knowing that, Like wisdom truly is earned or it's surrendered to right,
it is not knowledge. You can amass a lot of knowledge and not live what you know you know, And I think that that is an important distinction for people to think about in this day and age, especially when there are so many people that others are looking to. Right, It's like a lot of people can memorize, a lot of people can regurgitate, but like, what is the truth of the quality of the life they're living right, especially
off camera and off Instagram? Like what is the truth of how they move in the world and how they experience the world.
And I think that's wisdom.
And you know, I remember he and I were having this conversation that we explore in the book about wisdom, and you know, I my understanding of how wisdom moves in my life is like all of my lived experiences,
¶ A simple formula to discover your purpose
I've been able to glean wisdom from because I've chosen to be present with them, even the harder ones, the stranger ones, the confusing ones, and because of that, that's how I serve. I don't have to be out earning anything. I don't have to, you know, kind of like present myself in a certain way or hope that I'm being perceived in a certain way.
I trust what God.
Has allowed me to move in through what I've been present with, how I use it to help. And I know that everything, everything is in service to the greater world, to humanity. And that's what wisdom is. And I think some of the more spiritual differences between wisdom and knowledge wisdom serves right. Wisdom isn't about the self, It is about what this does for others. Wisdom isn't about even
your own personal story and trauma dump. It's about what is the deeper theme of awareness you've come to from that experience, and how do you share that, not to center yourself as wise, but as to share the wisdom to unlock the next person.
Such a great definition between the two. Thank you have a formula for purpose in your book.
Yes, for people who feel.
Lost right now in their purpose? How do you find it?
Ooh?
Purpose is one of those again, another tool of avoidance that can be done in a sophisticated way that you don't know, or it can be another way of kind of outsourcing your worth. I found that, so I've been talking about and teaching about purpose for over ten years. I gave like this big talk about purpose at an event.
It popped up in my memory is like ten years ago, and that's when I first started really deepening into like, how do we exist with purpose with dharma without also having to make that another thing, another kind of self aggrandizing way to receive attention or respect from other people. I think if we rest in purpose as a job title, or as an amount of likes or an amount of views, or any kind of outward validation, we're missing the point.
You know, Purpose is between you and God, and it is always evolving.
I thought my purpose was to broadcast.
I was a broadcaster for almost fifteen years in all these different places, and that was an extension of my.
Purpose for that moment. But it's a job, right.
I honed sks in that world to serve with them, which I can now do through also guiding meditation, writing books, learning how to talk about healing with people in a way that hits them right. But it's about making it
useful for others as well. And so you know, the way that I've come to study and hold purposes, it's really this beautiful, beautiful, intentional mix of your lived experience, sometimes even the much harder things, the wisdom that you glean from those experiences, the skills that you've amassed this.
Far in a variety of things.
Right, Like, maybe you were a cashier at sixteen, but there's something that is stuck with you to this day that serves you to this day about what you learned there. So it's your lived experience and the wisdom from it. It's the skills you've amassed thus far. It's the gifts you came to this world with, right, those inherent things that are naturally a part of who and what you are and how you serve with them.
Simple formula thank.
You, Yeah, really beautiful. And I feel like if people really break those down, if you really sit with each of those pieces of the formula, I feel like you'll probably learn things that you didn't even realize about yourself if you really start to reflect in your life. And maybe a part of the reason why. And I can speak to this because I feel like I've been lost in my purpose quite a few times in my life it's because you actually haven't got to know yourself in
that way. You know, when someone asked me, so, what do you like doing? And I'm like, I don't really know, but like you don't know because you haven't explored it. You don't know because you haven't really sat in thought what are those skills? What are those gifts? And you know, I remember I would always be like, I don't really
think I have anything I was naturally born with. And it was like, there's such a self deprecating part of this too, where you may not know your purpose because you actually haven't seen the value that you have in the world. You haven't seen the gifts that have been given to you from birth, and maybe you just haven't recognized it all this time because you've been lost in the things that you don't have, and you've been focusing on the parts of you that you wish you had
and all those things. And so really, if you sit with them, those are such brilliant questions, like such beautiful questions to help someone truly deeply understand their purpose.
My goodness, and I love that you that you brought that framing into it too, because it's like it's all connected, right, it's like you can't find purpose without really investing in your sense of worth because it's always going to be requiring someone else's validation for you to believe it, you know.
And I think when it comes to what our inherent gifts are, it's almost like you feel disappointed if if you're not a singer, Yeah, exactly right, Like if I don't have any gifts because you're not a famous singer,
like what do you what do you mean? I think one of my biggest, greatest gifts, And even though a lot of life informed this, I came to the earth like this, Like I can sit at the bottom of the ocean with someone right, and it's a pleasure to do that right, you know, And like that's a gift that that isn't something everyone can do.
That's my gift. And it's not the shiniest.
Gift necessarily to have, like being able to witness deep pain in others. It's not necessarily the gift that puts you on a billboard or you know, but it's my gift.
It's my gift, and it's valuable, and.
It's so beautiful to even be able to say that. I remember this one time I was with family, and everyone's going around saying, like, what is it that you think that you have received from your parents that's been
like a beautiful thing? And I remember this idea of like and I guess it kind of links to like false humility where it came around to me and I was like, oh, I don't I don't even want to like, am I am I being too boasty about myself if I say this, or like the confidence with which you said your gift, it's also such a beautiful thing because you're also it's not saying it from a place of ego, it's purely coming from a place of I've received this and this has been my experience, and now I can
actually share this with other people. And I think there's this especially for women, when you say, when you feel like you're talking about your gifts or sharing the good things about yourself, you feel like you're not being humble enough and actually honoring them and recognizing them is actually so little to do with ego and so much to
do with service. Yeah, and recognizing them is so much to do with service, because you're like, well, if I don't recognize them, I'm not gonna be able to use them, which means I actually of no use to other people. And that's usually when we feel the least valuable. In my life, especially, Yeah, I don't know why I offer the world, Like I remember that being a constant in my mind. I was like, I don't know what I
have to offer the world. Then I used to see I think it really got triggered when I saw what Jay started doing in his life, and he was so in his purpose and like he lived it, breathed it. He was so in joy and like constantly in purpose. And I was like, oh my god, I have absolutely no flipping idea what am I here for? But what beautiful place it was that I got to be in that because it really made me excavate and like, you know, yeah,
to actually investigate what that was. And I think investigating is such an important part of this process.
God, yes, oh my gosh, and I think too.
Sometimes this weird thing happens with women. I don't know if it happens with everyone, but it's like we're being kind of gas lit in a very specific way where it's like even in some of the same rooms where people are telling you to like own your worth, own your purpose, and then the second you try that on. Then people are like, oh right, chill out, like okay, you're not all that, or you're like, well, what the hell?
I just got my confidence in this, and now you are knocking me back down.
Now you're knocking me back down. Or even when we say things like how am I meant to serve the world? How am I meant to bring my purpose to the world? You don't have to think about the world as a planet of nine billion. It's your world and not influencing nine billion people, which who does There are people alive that have never heard the name Jesus.
There are people alive like and think about that.
How I use that as a specific example because of how permeating Christianity is and how ancient there's people that to me, it is shocking. You know, maybe somewhere in some corner of the world haven't heard of Oprah, which blows my mind because I'm like, ah, you know, but it's like, it's about you bringing your purpose to your world, to your ecosystem. Five people is plenty, yes, twenty people has plenty, a few hundred and a few thousand. Some are meant to guide millions.
It doesn't mean they're better or their purpose is more important.
It's just that happens to be the way they're meant to be used exactly.
It's so true, And I think we minimize our impact by looking at those metrics. Ye it's like, oh, what am I going to do? What's the point of me? Even when my friends said, what's the point of me posting this? And I'm like, but what you just said was so amazing. Then you have like two hundred people that could hear this and one that might say one person from wanting to leave this world wanting to not
be here because of your experience. And so I think we really minimize the impact because of how we see people with forty two million followers or whatever it is, we minimize the impact of even if you're not on social media, what about the people just around you that you see every single day, the people you work with, the people that are within your family. Like, that's you impacting way more people than people were able to do back in the day.
And that's actually what our work is right now, I think, right because too many people are conditioned to this current zeitgeist and think it is about the likes or the follows or people in other states I'll never visit or countries, I'll never be.
Need to know who I am.
And it's like we all need a deep refresh on how to show up for the people that are in our physical, actual, real worlds.
I always said this gem like I random, I have these random thoughts, and I'm like, do you think we were supposed to travel? Like do you think in life we were supposed to go to other places and meet all these different people? Or were we supposed to stay as they did back in the day, like in our communities, creating these really solid structures and frameworks with the people and the cultures and the community that we are from and and actually build that out in a beautiful way.
And would the world just be like so much better set had we not known what else was there? And like, anyway, that's for a different topic, but now it just reminded me.
Of what you said that I've been thinking thoughts like that too. Yeah, I so feel that, and I think it's important we the pendulum always swings right, So like so many people weren't seeing the world and needed.
To be expanded until we've.
Had this surgeon like global travel and now it's an opportunity to bring some learnings back, yes, and deal a little bit more with less.
We'll have an existential question podcast at some point. But thank you so much. Oh my god, I could just honestly sit and talk to you for hours, but I think it's already been an hour. So thank you so much. And this was honestly such a such it was it was a conversation I needed today. Honestly, it was beautiful. Thank you, and everybody go out and get Living in Wisdom by Davy? Is it Davy? Don't say right? You know what I'm saying.
I know Depak always calls me David.
How do you pronounce it for me? Debbie?
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I received both because you suit the name Davy, I'll say it.
I feel connected.
Yes, Debbie Brown, Living in Wisdom such a beautiful book. And if any of this resonated with you, then this book is going to be everything that you need. Thank you, thank you. Yes, as